Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Perfect Health Diet is an extremely well referenced and supported diet book. I have read maybe fifty health and nutrition books, many in the "low carb", "paleo", "traditional eating" and "whole foods" categories. This book is the best that I have read. Every issue is discussed in detail. The end product is a diet that has similar macronutrient ratios to Pacific islanders with high levels of longevity and resistance to disease. How they deduce that such a diet is optimal is pretty interesting. The authors use the premise that your body can convert one type of macronutrient to another, but such conversion may not be optimal. Why go completely high protein when your body will just make glucose from protein? Why go high carb when the carbohydrates above 600 calories a day are converted to saturated fat? The authors also point to the nutrients in human milk as evidence on what might be optimal to eat. The discussion of macronutrients (fats, proteins, carbohydrates) was the most detailed I have seen in any nutrition book for a non-professional audience. The diet is a "paleolithic" diet in that it suggests avoiding food toxins such as fructose (sugar), grains other than white rice, legumes and omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. The book is quite specific about the evidence on these toxins. The diet is fine with so-called "safe starches", such as potatoes and white rice. It ends up being a high fat diet by calories as protein and carbohydrates are given generous upper bounds. Coconut oil is praised. A section on supplements gives reasonable advice to focus on a few key nutrients and to avoid a few other common supplements. All the advice is quite reasonable. Readers who still need to be convinced that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol are not the causes of heart disease might start with a more basic book that fights all the introductory fights (Good Calories, Bad Calories by Taubes is one, albeit lengthy suggestion). But for someone buying into the basic paradigm and looking to optimize their own health through nutrition, the Perfect Health Diet is the best book to buy.